Ultra Games

Ultra Software Corporation

Former type	Shell subsidiary of Konami
Industry	Video game
Fate	Merged to parent company
Successor	Konami of America
Founded	1988
Defunct	1992
Headquarters	Buffalo Grove, IL, USA
Products	Video games
Owner	Konami
Parent	Konami of America

Ultra Software Corporation was a shell corporation and publishing label created in 1988 as a subsidiary of Konami of America, in an effort to get around Nintendo of America's strict licensing rules in place at the time for the North American Konami releases of games for Nintendo consoles. One of these rules was that a third-party company could only publish up to five games per year for the Nintendo Entertainment System in the US. This was hardly convenient for Konami, which had begun releasing more than ten games a year for both the Family Computer and Family Computer Disk System in Japan. With a greater library than they were allowed to localize, Konami formed the Ultra Games brand to extend their annual library to ten games a year.

Ultra's first game was the NES version of Metal Gear. At first, Ultra was dedicated to localizing Konami's pre-existing software from Japan, but later it began publishing works from other companies as well. Some of Konami's most notable games released under the Ultra label include Operation C (an original Game Boy installment of the Contra series), Snake's Revenge (a non-canonical sequel to the original Metal Gear) and the first few Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles games for the NES and Game Boy.

Although created by Konami to bypass Nintendo policies, the Ultra label was also used on at least two IBM PC games: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Metal Gear.

After the North American launch of the Super Nintendo Entertainment System in 1991, Nintendo started relaxing the restriction on the number of games third parties could publish each year. As a result, Ultra Games began losing its purpose and Konami shut down the name in 1992.

In Europe, Konami established the Palcom Software Limited subsidiary for similar purposes. Its library was similar to Ultra's but the company also published games that were not released in North America, notably Road Fighter, Parodius and Crackout. Palcom also released Super NES games that were published in America by Konami itself (in contrast, some games that were published under the Ultra brand in North America, such as Metal Gear and Snake's Revenge, were published under the normal Konami brand in Europe). The European subsidiary lasted longer than Ultra Games, until it was closed down in early 1994.

Games published

All games were developed by Konami, except where noted.

See also

• Konami

External links

• Ultra Games profile on MobyGames
• Palcom profile on MobyGames